Question: How do you discriminate a false guru and a genuine Guru?

Interviewer: I did read in the Press Communiqué that one of your topics is the topic of Guru, of gurus. Gurus, false gurus. Now what are they? How do you discriminate a false guru and a genuine Guru?

Shri Mataji: Yes, I’ve been talking against them since I think, 1970 very openly, even naming them. It’s very easy to make them out, you see, they are out for money. It’s the shopping. And they are out for money. They know the need of the hour. It’s like the demand and supply business, you see. It’s an economic activity. And, anybody who asks for money, one must know it’s not real.

Now, for example, your Realization is a living process. And we don’t pay any money to the Mother Earth to sprout the seed. Of course, but say, supposing, these people have started this Ashram. Now, here there are so many living. I don’t know how they spend, how they live, it is their lookout. They know all accounts, everything, I don’t bother. I am very bad at money myself. And also, you see they are the ones who collect money, and put up the posters and things like that. But for Realization I cannot take money, for curing you I cannot take money. I mean, there’s no question, you cannot value it. This has no economic value.

Interviewer: So you would say the discrimination is if somebody is interested in money – or not?

Shri Mataji: First. First chance. Second you must see the life style of such a person. Supposing such a man leads a very funny life, immoral life. And tells you big stories, then you should know that this is wrong, because a person who himself is not pure has no business to make others pure. There are many things described about false gurus in our scriptures, thank God. And so if you see their behaviour, that they say something and do something else. And they have scandalous life behind it. But the disciples just hide it, because they think, now we have jumped in the sea so let us have it. They just go through it. They are exposed, so many of them are so badly exposed, but still their disciples find it difficult to get out, because they are under their control, their spell. They know that this man is wrong. He has done so much wrong. Like Rajneesh, now see, he has been found out. There are so many Germans who go to him, in Poona. And about this man I told long time back that he is wrong type of person.